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Simplified Social Media: What will you post?

This post is part two of the social media marketing strategy series. Last time we talked about our social media strategy I told you why it was important to know where you were going to post. Hopefully you’ve figured that out by now, but if not you can go back and read it here.

Social Media Marketing Strategy Series

The next thing we’re going to break down is what kind of content you should be sharing on each platform. As Nathan Ellering of CoSchedule writes, “Some content lends itself better for certain social networks.” (Source)

Part Two: Simplified Social Media: What will you post?

So, different kinds of content. What exactly does that mean? If there is one thing that you take away from this article let it be this, it’s perfectly acceptable to share the same content on multiple platforms, as long as you change the social media message in a way that will drive maximum traffic back to your site.

Here are some basic guidelines to follow when deciding what kind of content to post to social media.

Twitter is for business marketing.

The content marketer’s best friend, Twitter is by far the easiest way to attract, engage and educate your audience. Why? Because it’s fast and it’s global. AND as of 2015, 1.3 billion people were registered users of Twitter. (Source)

Try this:

Share helpful business tips

Include 1-2 relevant hashtags (Anything more looks spammy and takes up valuable characters.)

Include a visual for increased engagement (Up to 150% more retweets. Source)

Facebook is for fun.

I don’t know about you, but when I log on to Facebook I’m usually taking a break from work or family or just life in general. I think this is true for most people, which is why entertaining content (i.e. memes, gifs and parodies) have taken over news feeds everywhere. Ellering says it best, “Industry blah content just doesn’t work for Facebook.” (Source)

Try this:

I’ve been working on implementing these strategies on my business page here. It’s a work in progress, but I really like the increase in engagement that I’m seeing now that I’m providing content that my audience enjoys. (And not just links back to my blog!)

Video is a huge trend right now, so if you can include it into your social media strategy you’ll have a greater chance of reaching more people.

Try this:

Google+ is LinkedIn and Facebook’s baby.

This is where you will combine both professional and personal content. Google+ is an essential platform because as we stated in part one of the series, the more often you post to Google+ gives Google the search engine more opportunity to crawl your content.

Try this:

Share a mix of personal and professional content

Try long form messages

Include relevant hashtags (Google+ will automatically add them as well.)

Pinterest must be PRETTY.

I think most of us know this already, but if you’re going to post to Pinterest, you must create attractive visuals. You don’t have to be a graphic designer to create nice branded images. I use Canva to create all of my images and graphics, and I would recommend it to anyone. (P.S. You can save loads of time in Canva by creating image templates that you can re-use over and over again. I created a step-by-step guide you can download in my Free Resource Library.)

Reader Interactions

Comments

Hi Lindsey, some great tips here, especially for someone like myself who is a long way off being social media savvy (although I am getting better). Google+ was my favourite social media platform, until I threw myself into getting to know Twitter better, now I love that.

I’m very curious to hear about Google+. Unfortunately it’s one of the ones that I’m least familiar with. What was your favorite aspect of it? Or maybe I should ask, what was it about Google+ that made you like it more than the others? Thanks for your input, Debbie! 🙂

It may well have been because Google+ was the first social media platform where I could understand how it worked, it seemed so much more simple than FB. However when I decided to learn more about Twitter and how that worked, I sort of stopped using it and now I love Twitter. With Instagram being a close second…. Sorry Google+, although I do keep meaning to dedicate some time to you!

I ABSOLUTELY understand how that can happen. I’m a millennial, so I think I naturally pick up on technology and social media very quickly, but if I had never been exposed to it prior to becoming a blogger I would be clueless. There are so many different social media platforms out there, I don’t know if I can pick just one to be my favorite. I naturally go to Facebook more because that’s where most of my friends and family spend time, but I personally love Instagram. I just got into Snapchat recently, and it’s becoming a close third.

I did that for awhile too, not realizing that it should be any different. It’s totally normal not to be aware, but it can make such a big impact when you start putting a little more planning into the social media message. I try to keep things professional on Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+, and then I post more entertainment and personal pieces to my Facebook page. I get a lot more engagement that way because people aren’t interested in reading about business when they’re browsing through Facebook.

Lindsey – these are great tips – I honestly didn’t know half the things you shared. and I don’t even know what Google+ is about, but I guess I had better check it out. thanks so much for sharing at #WayWow

I’ve been picking people’s brains around the blogosphere about what they’re struggling with the most in regards to social media. The vast majority told me that they didn’t know how to create a social media strategy or couldn’t find the time to keep it up. That’s why I’m setting out to break it down into smaller chunks that us small bloggers can actually understand and put into practice. I hope you’ll let me know how these tips work for you! 😉

This is such a great summary of each platform! It really helps me think more about what to do where, because honestly I’m at a loss most of the time. I’ve pinned this to reference later. I’m trying to step up my social media game and this will help a ton. Thanks!

I’ve found the hardest part about social media marketing is being consistent. The internet never sleeps, so it’s easy to get burnt out. When I first started promoting my blog on social media I really had no clue what I was doing, I just used the title for everything. What I’m really learning about social media is that although the main goal is to get people to click through, in order to do that, you have to craft your message in a way that will grab their attention, and then you have to keep the conversation going. Social media is so much more than just status updates and hashtags. LOL!

This is so timely. I have been thinking a lot about my reach and how to increase it. It seems that social media growth and best practices are the best way to grow quickly. And if you are using the platform’s correctly you can retain and grow your audience not just your follow count.

I need to concentrate more on Pinterest as it is definitely the up-and-comer and its own search engine. Next I need to focus on using Google+ for each and every entry on my blog, but using it correctly. Google Plus may not be a huge traffic referrer but it is great for your SEO and will send you traffic from Google itself. Huge bonus.

I love Facebook, Instagram, StumbleUpon and Twitter and would like to grow my following on each. But I need to realize that these are more secondary than Pinterest or Google+. And I need to utilize my time better when posting. This will help me nail it down and come up with a system that works for me.

You are absolutely right about Pinterest and admittedly it’s the one I also need to work on the most. It’s so easy to get lost in the shuffle of social media, especially when your searching for other content to share.

I’ve found that my favorite social media platforms have changed a lot in the past six months. Pinterest used to be my favorite, however I try to avoid being on it too much during the day because it’s a time sucker. I would love to be more present on Instagram but I spend so much time finding images and then creating relevant captions with calls to actions, and I only get a handful of referrals back to my site from Instagram each month so it’s hard to justify spending so much time on it.

I definitely think Google Plus is an important one, I need to spend more time trying to understand it because like you said, it’s excellent SEO. A lot to think about… right now I’m just trying to make sure I post consistently and to get the pattern down. I think I’ve done pretty well with that for the most part. (Considering my crazy schedule.) Now I would like to dedicate each day a week to a different social media platform so I can read, comment and respond to everyone and load up my scheduler for the next week. I’ll let you know how it goes. 😉

This is such a great post! I honestly didn’t think about sharing things in a more ‘fun’ way on Facebook. I’ll definitely be looking at how I promote on Facebook in more detail and can’t wait to see the results!

I’m SO glad that you found it useful! For the longest time I used to just copy and paste the same message across Facebook, Twitter, Google +, Pinterest and Instagram, but I never really had that much engagement. Since I’ve started switching up my content and tailoring it to the people that follow me on that platform I’ve seen much more growth and overall engagement. Let me know if you have any questions! 😉